The best businesses come out of frustration

GUY RAZ: When you’re thinking about starting a business, where do the ideas come from?

RICHARD BRANSON: As I’ve said, I think the best businesses come out of frustration. If you have a bad experience with another business somewhere in your life, you think, “Screw it, we can do it better than this.” Even if you don’t know much about it, just do it, get in there. Many years ago I wanted to invest some money and somebody gave me a bit of paper, and at the bottom of the bit of paper it said, “Bid offer spread 5%.” So I happened to say, “What does that mean?” And he said, “That means we take 5% of your money before we start investing it. I thought, “Screw this, I’m going to set up our own bank.” And we’ll make sure there isn’t any jargon like that to hide the real charges. We’ll be a very transparent, a very open bank. Virgin Money is now the prime challenger bank in Britain. And I didn’t know… My experience with banks was bank managers coming and banging on my door and trying to put us out of business. So I didn’t know a lot about it, but I’ve found people who know a lot about it to run it, and left them get on with it.